


It Seems That All My Bridges Have Been Burnt

by enigmaticblue



Series: Second Childhood [7]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Age Regression/De-Aging, Community: trope_bingo, Gen, Homesickness, Road Trips, Trope Bingo Round 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-10
Updated: 2014-12-10
Packaged: 2018-02-28 20:55:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2746718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigmaticblue/pseuds/enigmaticblue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nostomania, n. An irresistible compulsion to return home; intense homesickness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It Seems That All My Bridges Have Been Burnt

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the trope_bingo prompt “road trip” and the hc_bingo prompt “homesickness.” Title from the Mumford & Sons song, “Roll Away Your Stone”

Wesley leaves a note, of course. He can’t very well disappear without a trace. Whatever Angel’s failings, he’s bound to move heaven and earth to find Wesley if he thinks that something took him, and he hadn’t left of his own free will.

 

He keeps it brief and to the point.

 

 _I’m leaving to find my aunt,_ he writes. _Please don’t look for me. I’m useless to you if I stay here, and I refuse to be a burden any longer. I was fine on my own this summer, and I’ll be fine until I grow up_ again _and can be of some assistance. I’ll call when I can._

 

Wesley hesitates in front of the safe. He knows there’s still money in there, money that Angel had technically left him for his use over the summer, and the remaining funds from Wesley’s closed bank account.

 

Really, he should leave at least the money that could accurately be termed Angel’s, but Wesley hasn’t kept track of whose money he’s been spending. He has no clear idea of how much could be reasonably termed as _his_ , and how much should be returned to Angel.

 

Wesley thinks about the hundreds of miles ahead of them, and all the things that could go wrong, and he stifles the guilt he feels when he reaches for the dwindling stacks of cash.

 

But it feels as though he’s burning a bridge. Wesley isn’t sure he’ll ever be able to return if he empties the safe, and that hurts more than he can say.

 

“You don’t have to do this.”

 

Wesley freezes, momentarily startled. “What?”

 

“It’s not too late,” Dawn says. “You can leave the money where it is, rip up the letter, and we can make ourselves scarce. We could probably even stay in L.A. It’s a big enough city that Angel won’t even know we’re here.”

 

Strangely enough, that’s just the push Wesley needs, and he grabs the cash and stuffs it in his bag. “No. I made a decision, and I doubt Spike’s presence here would remain quiet forever.”

 

“That doesn’t mean you can’t change your mind,” Dawn points out.

 

It had been easier, Wesley thinks, when he’d been talking to Spike and Dawn and planning for the future, realizing that his own path no longer follows that of Angel Investigations. He’d been excited by the possibility, but now reality is setting in.

 

Wesley feels trapped, stuck between the rock that is his past, and the hard place that is undoubtedly his future.

 

“There’s nothing left for me here,” Wesley says quietly, and saying the words out loud makes him feel better. He finishes putting the cash in his backpack and zips it up. “Did you get the weapons?”

 

Dawn nods. “Yeah, the trunk is pretty full. What about your books?”

 

Wesley looks longingly at the library, at his carefully curated collection. He’s spent years buying rare books when he could afford them, scouring used bookstores for hidden gems. Even now, when he’s useless in every other area, he could always provide a translation for a text that might be helpful.

 

He’d passed up the invitation to join Rondell’s crew for that reason, that he couldn’t use his skills in language and translation, but that had been when he’d believed he would stay here, with Angel.

 

“There are a couple that might be of use to us, and that I wouldn’t like to leave behind, but Angel and the others can have the rest.” Wesley strides into the office without thinking too hard about his choices, and pulls three books from the shelves. Two are useful, and not particularly difficult to find, although they are rather expensive to procure.

 

The third is one that is unlikely to help them, but that Wesley can’t bear to part with—it’s a fifteenth century demon compendium, one of its kind, that he’d found at an estate sale and purchased at far less than its true value. Of course, it’s written in a rare demonic language, which Wesley speaks, but not many others do, so it’s not like the auctioneer would have known just what he had.

 

Not that it matters. No one he’s leaving behind would know how to use it.

 

“We ready to go?” Spike asks, leaning against the doorjamb, standing just behind Dawn.

 

Wesley nods. “Do either of you have any credit or debit cards?”

 

Dawn shakes her head. “No, we didn’t really have a chance to grab them.”

 

“Good,” Wesley replies. “Because it’s cash only from here on out. If we have to use a credit card, it can’t be in our names.”

 

Spike raises an eyebrow. “Who are you worried about tracking us, half-pint?”

 

“Angel, or Giles,” Wesley says. “If we’re really serious about staying under the radar, we need to use cash, and we should probably avoid motels, too.”

 

Dawn frowns. “Where are we going to stay if not in a motel?”

 

“State parks,” Wesley says. “They have shower facilities, and campgrounds. It’s still early enough in the season that we’ll blend in with everyone else squeezing in one last vacation before the weather gets bad.”

 

Spike snorts. “I’m not exactly the outdoor type, Watcher.”

 

“If we drive at night, you’ll be less likely to get pulled over because of the paint on the windows,” Wesley points out reasonably. “Dawn and I can sleep while you drive, and then during the day, you can sleep. It won’t be the most comfortable arrangement, but it will keep us safe.”

 

“Smart,” Dawn says.

 

“I’m assuming that you already have our route mapped out,” Spike says dryly.

 

Wesley shrugs. “It’s not the most direct route, but it will get us there, and we’ll be stopping places where there are plenty of tourists.”

 

Spike and Dawn share a look, and then Dawn shrugs. “It sounds like a plan to me.”

 

“Considering that I was just going to start driving, it’s probably a better plan than I would have come up with,” Spike admits.

 

The sun is setting, casting the lobby in shadow, and Wesley looks around at the place that has become his home. He feels a sharp stab of regret, mixed with longing. He has the sense that he won’t be seeing this place again any time soon.

 

They’re leaving at night to reduce the chance of Angel and company coming back to find them here, and to reduce the possibility of the cops pulling Spike over. Wesley has estimated about eight hours to one of Lake Tahoe’s many campsites.

 

Most of the free campsites are remote, without any services; others require reservations and a fee. Wesley figures that in the worst-case scenario, they find a trailhead where Spike can sleep in the car, and he and Dawn can walk around. If they have to, they can go a couple of days without showering, as long as there are toilet facilities.

 

“Ready?” Spike asks, and his voice is curiously gentle.

 

Wesley nods and forces a smile. “Let’s get going.”

 

They go through a drive-through on their way out of town, eating cheap hamburgers and fries, which Spike steals from Dawn. Wesley’s in the backseat, so his food is safe. He envies Spike and Dawn their obvious connection and camaraderie, mostly because he’d thought he’d had that with Angel, and Cordelia, and Gunn, but he’d clearly been mistaken.

 

Dawn falls asleep around midnight, after they’ve left the city behind them, but Wesley remains awake and watchful. He’s fully committed to this plan, but he still has doubts. He’s not sure what his aunt’s reaction will be, and he’s already homesick.

 

Not for how things are now, maybe, but for how things were before the curse.

 

“Doing okay back there?” Spike asks quietly.

 

Wesley hitches a shoulder. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

 

Spike lets his silence speak for him.

 

“I’ll be fine,” Wesley insists. “Thanks for doing this.”

 

Spike is quiet for a moment. “You treat me like a man, and I’ve found that to be a rare thing.”

 

“You treat me like I’m competent,” Wesley counters, “and not like a child.”

 

Spike smirks over his shoulder. “That’s because you _are_ competent, half-pint.”

 

Wesley leans back against the door with a smile on his face. It doesn’t take him long to fall asleep after that.

 

~~~~~

 

Breakfast is obtained at McDonald’s, and they stop by a convenience store for pre-packaged sandwiches for lunch. It’s not the healthiest of diets, but it’s cheap, and will suffice for the time being.

 

“Don’t go too far,” Spike warns them after he parks. “If you get lost, I’m not going to be of much use until it gets dark.”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Dawn replies. She’s clearly ready to get out and stretch her legs. “Sleep tight.”

 

They wander away from the car, and Wesley asks, “You okay?”

 

Dawn’s smile is shaky. “I keep thinking about what Tara would say. She would have insisted I have something green to eat.”

 

“We could hit up a Subway for dinner tonight,” Wesley suggests. “I think they have vegetables.”

 

Dawn sniffs. “Yeah, that would probably satisfy her.”

 

“I didn’t really get a chance to know her,” Wesley says. “Do you want to talk about them?”

 

She shakes her head. “No, not really. I mean, someday maybe, but it hurts too much right now.”

 

“That’s fair,” Wesley says. “Just, you know, if you change your mind.”

 

“I know,” Dawn says suddenly, her expression brightening. “Teach me a language.”

 

Wesley frowns. “Which language? I speak a number of them, although most of them are demonic. I know French, German, and Spanish, though.”

 

“You brought that book with you,” Dawn says. “With the demonic language?”

 

“It’s rather obscure,” Wesley cautions. “And probably won’t be helpful.”

 

Dawn raises her eyebrows. “Then why did you learn it?”

 

“I was curious.”

 

Dawn rolls her eyes. “So, why can’t I be curious? Spike knows a bunch of languages, and if I’m going to be a demon hunter or whatever, I need to start learning now.”

 

Wesley has never taught anybody anything; even as a Watcher, he felt more like he was running to keep up with Faith and Buffy, and never quite managing it. No one has ever _wanted_ to learn what he could teach.

 

“All right,” he says. “I don’t know that I’m a very good teacher, but I’ll do my best.”

 

It turns out that Dawn is a good student, and they pour over Wesley’s book, with Wesley slowly explaining the finer points of Vrisarian grammar. They eat their sandwiches, which are tasteless and kind of soggy, and go for a walk before Dawn professes that she’s ready to get started again.

 

“You really like this?” Wesley asks incredulously.

 

Dawn shrugs. “Buffy never really wanted me to help, but I wanted to, you know?”

 

“I’m certainly not going to stop you,” Wesley replies. “And while Spike might be a little overprotective when it comes to risking your safety, I suspect that he would be grateful not to have to do the research himself.”

 

“There is that,” Dawn agrees. Her smile is a little shaky again. “I never thought I’d be the one to have adventures.”

 

Wesley looks around at the giant trees, hearing birdsong and seeing sunlight filtering in through the trees. “It’s a rather peaceful adventure so far.”

 

Dawn snorts. “After Sunnydale, I’ll take a peaceful adventure. We still have to figure out how we’re going to convince your aunt that you’re really _you_.”

 

Wesley grimaces. “Yeah. Let’s cross that bridge when we come to it.”

 

“Even if the worst happens, you’re still going to have us,” Dawn says. “You know that, right?”

 

And Dawn’s words ease a little of Wesley’s homesickness and heartache. “I do know that,” he assures her, and they go back to the book.

 

~~~~~

 

That evening, when Dawn asks to go to a restaurant, Spike doesn’t complain and doesn’t ask why. He leaves his duster in the car, and they find a place that serves salad and Dawn eats something green.

 

Wesley does the same, out of solidarity.

 

~~~~~

 

The route that Wesley has mapped means three days on the road, along a lot of back roads and state highways. But Wesley knows those roads also mean fewer cops and no state troopers to speak of, who might be more inclined to stop a car with blacked-out windows.

 

Wesley knows that this trip had been his idea, and therefore, it’s on him to mitigate the risks.

 

The second day, they stop in Deschutes National Forest, and they find a camping site with showers. Since they have to pay a fee, and there’s no way to do that without raising suspicions, given the state of Spike’s vehicle—mostly, the blacked-out windows—he has Spike park about a mile away, and he and Dawn sneak in to use the showers.

 

“Have you done this before?” Dawn asks as Wesley studies his trail map and leads them in the back way, right up to the showers. They’ll just get sweaty again on the way back to the car, but at least they’ll be clean for a bit.

 

Wesley hesitates. “When I was on my own, after I got fired from the Council, and before I started working for Angel, I found that there were certain places I could go to get cleaned up cheaply. Especially when I was chasing various demons across the state.”

 

He’d become very good at surviving that summer, although he doesn’t like to talk about it, or even think about it. Wesley knows Angel had thought him foolish when Wesley had called himself a rogue demon hunter.

 

Sometimes, Wesley wonders what might have happened if Angel had never invited him for breakfast, or hadn’t wanted him around. What kind of man might he have turned into?

 

And would he be in a better place now?

 

“Virtually none of the places I stayed then would take me now, which is why I couldn’t leave the hotel,” Wesley explains. “And even now…”

 

Even now, if he were caught by the authorities, he would most likely wind up in juvenile detention, or if he is very lucky, a half-decent foster home. He suspects the same could be said for Dawn, although Spike would certainly try to rescue her.

 

He thinks that Dawn might be old enough to fall through the cracks, if the authorities find her and she escapes. They’ll regard her as another runaway, and she can disappear.

 

Wesley is young enough that he thinks they’d probably put out an alert, and then he’d be in real trouble.

 

But Deschutes National Forest gives them a chance to get cleaned up, even if Wesley does feel vaguely guilty about not paying the campground fee, and then they sneak back out the same way they’d come in.

 

“What would you have done if you hadn’t decided to see your aunt?” Dawn asks on their way back to the lookout point where Spike had parked.

 

Wesley shrugs. “I would have stayed at the hotel, and I probably would have had to wait until I was older to strike out on my own. This is better.”

 

Dawn glances over at him, and then says quietly, “I always—or at least I always remember wanting a younger sibling. Buffy was just so…” Her expression is fond. “Buffy, you know? I thought I might have better luck with another sibling.”

 

Wesley isn’t quite sure how to respond to that, and he says, “I never had any siblings, and I was mostly grateful, because I wouldn’t have wanted to subject anyone to my father. But—I thought it might be nice to have someone older, who could protect me. Which, I know, is selfish.”

 

He also thinks it entirely possible that an older sibling might have set an impossible standard. It would be just his luck that instead of getting a protector, Wesley would have ended up with another bully.

 

“What about your mom?” Dawn asks. “You don’t really talk about her.”

 

Wesley concentrates on navigating the faint path; he suspects that others have also surreptitiously used those showers without paying the fee. “She was kind, but—vague. I never really got to know her, because my father was the dominant figure in my childhood.”

 

“I don’t really know my dad either,” Dawn offers. “I mean, the monks gave me memories of him, but what I do remember is that he worked a lot, and he and Mom fought a lot—mostly over Buffy—and he was never really there.” She pauses. “The summer after Buffy…after she died the first time, she went to Los Angeles, but Dad said he really only had room for her, and that…”

 

Wesley did the math. Buffy would have been a teenager, old enough to be left on her own, and Dawn would have been eleven or twelve, and therefore would have required more care.

 

“You know that’s not what really happened, though, right?” Wesley asks gently. “The monks had to fit you into Buffy’s life, as though you’d always been there, and they made those decisions, or the magic did it for them.”

 

Dawn snorts. “That’s not what it feels like.”

 

“No, I suppose that’s probably true,” Wesley agrees.

 

“You remember me, though?” Dawn asks, sounding a bit desperate.

 

“I remember seeing you during that aspect of the demon fiasco, when Angel was still around,” Wesley replies. “That’s my clearest memory.”

 

“I thought you were kind of cool,” Dawn offers.

 

Wesley snorts.

 

“No, really,” she insists. “You were older and British, and my sister was always complaining about you, so I figured you probably _had_ to be cooler than she gave you credit for. And when Angel delivered the heart, you were the one who knew how to cook up the potion and everything. That was cool.”

 

Wesley laughs, but he suspects the sound holds little humor. “And here we are.”

 

“After you saved my life,” Dawn says. “With the Knights, and helped us when we came to L.A., and didn’t treat Spike like crap, the way everybody else does. We wouldn’t be here except for you.”

 

Wesley turns to face her abruptly, his emotions too much to contain. He has no strength left to give, and he’s afraid, and he knows that he will let Dawn down, just as he’s let down so many people, starting with his father. “You would have been fine,” he says harshly. “You and Spike are capable individuals, and I’m so much dead weight. You could have stayed in L.A. and gone to school, and you would have been fine. I’ve taken us on a wild goose chase that may mean nothing in the long run, except that I have burned every bridge behind me.”

 

He scrubs his hands over his face. “I’m a dead man, Dawn. I don’t exist, not officially, and I—I have no fucking clue what I’m doing.”

 

She hugs him then, and she’s several inches taller, and can therefore enfold him in her arms, but it doesn’t feel maternal as it had with Cordelia.

 

He and Dawn are two quasi-orphans trying to make their way through a shadow-world where neither of them are really real. In the end, they have nothing but each other and Spike, and Wesley still doesn’t trust that he has either of them.

 

They cling to each other, and Dawn says, “I can’t tell Spike this, because I don’t want to be even more of a burden, but I know he’d be better off without me. Even if he can’t hunt humans anymore, he could leave, and I wouldn’t blame him. He’s done so much already, and I know he’ll be with me until I don’t need him anymore, but I feel guilty.”

 

Wesley knows exactly what she means; he’d left Angel and the others because he’d been tired of feeling like a burden, but that gives him some insight. “I don’t think you’re a burden to him,” he murmurs. “You’re a promise, and the chance to prove something. And I think he loves you, separate from Buffy or anyone else.” He hesitates, then adds, “Unsurprisingly, really.”

 

“When you’ve burned all your bridges, I guess the only thing to do is move ahead,” Dawn says, pulling back. “For the record, I trust you. I mean, I love Spike, but he’s not human, and he’s not the best planner. I think we work better together.”

 

Strangely enough, Wesley can’t find it in him to disagree. “I don’t know what my aunt will do.”

 

And Dawn smiles and says, “We cross that bridge when we come to it, and if we have to, we burn that one, too. The important thing is that we stick together.”

 

Wesley smiles and says, “That goes without saying.”


End file.
